Here’s the latest iPad commercial. As one might expect, it features a bunch-o’-stuff you can do with iPad, set to a catchy tune.
However, as a special bonus Apple has cleverly embedded a copywriter’s aptitude test. Here’s the sequence of words that appear on-screen. Which one doesn’t fit the pattern?
Visually, iPad does look delicious in this spot — even if Apple neglects to promote it as tableware. For the moment though, let’s just say it remains one adjective short of magical.
In this world, dreams and aspirations come in every size and shape.
Look hard enough and you’ll find a brain surgeon who wants to be a toreador. Or a truck driver who wants to be a nun. Maybe even a BlackBerry that dreams of being the life of the party.
Well, that’s weird. Here’s that BlackBerry now. AT&T just started running this ad for the new Torch. They sum it up like this: “Business, meet fun. Fun, business.”
It’s a curious approach, because business and fun have not only been meeting for three years — they’ve been shamelessly involved in a wild, passionate affair for all to see. It’s only RIM, maker of BlackBerry, who’s been watching from afar.
But let’s mind our manners, and first lavish this commercial with the creative praise it deserves. It’s tremendously cool. The concept is fantastic. The production is first-rate, the soundtrack is quirkily fitting, and I smile every time I watch it.
Unfortunately, this Torch ad is in serious danger of proving an old marketing adage. That is, nothing kills a bad product faster than a great commercial. Drawing a large crowd can be fatal if the crowd is largely disappointed.
No matter how you twist your reasoning, it’s hard to escape the basic fact: Torch ain’t fun. In fact, it’s shockingly un-fun when compared to iPhone and Android. On the day it was released, it was panned for its underpowered processor and undersized, low-res display (Gizmodo: “like going back to standard definition after a year on HD”). If apps are any indicator of fun, iPhone offers 225,000, Android 100,000 and BlackBerry only 8,000 — most of which aren’t even compatible with the BlackBerry 6 OS at the core of Torch.
Seemingly determined to prove the fun, those mirth-makers at RIM have done just the opposite. They’ve shipped Torch with a version of the 20-year-old arcade game, Sonic the Hedgehog. (Engadget: “the experience is abysmal. Slowdowns, garbled audio, horrible controls. It’s actually kind of sad.”)
Given the grim reality, Torch’s sluggish initial sales are understandable. During opening weekend, there were no lines and no sellouts. Total sales were only a small fraction of what iPhone and Android have seen.
Comparisons to Torch’s competitors are so one-sided, AT&T can’t possibly be talking to the general public with this ad. They have to be talking to long-term BlackBerry customers who have the itch to upgrade, but are being distracted by those flirtatious newcomers. If this is the case, they really mean to describe Torch as “relatively fun.” Compared to the humorless old BlackBerrys many of these people are carrying, the Torch is a laugh riot.
In the end, Torch is a stopgap measure at best. It can only hope to stem the tide of BlackBerry defectors, but clearly it has no hope of stealing customers from iPhone and Android. That’s bad news, considering iPhone and Android are rolling in cash by stealing customers from RIM.
Clearly RIM needs to be less concerned about the party clothes, and more concerned about what’s beneath.
Okay, so I’m a day late with this one. Just wanted to drool a bit over the Droid X teaser commercial that ran the night before yesterday’s launch.
I have to admit, this spot hooked me.
I’ve knocked Droid ads in the past for being 99% testosterone with little appeal to the female audience. I wouldn’t make the same criticism of this spot — it’s beautifully produced and, lo and behold, it actually has a story. The soundtrack is perfect. Mercifully absent are the cheesy effects and robot-macho trash talk.
Consistent with Droid’s we’re-not-Apple approach, no spot could be as far removed from Apple’s touchy-feely FaceTime spots as this. While Apple touts babies and relationships, Droid is on a cold, hard quest to uncover new technologies. I’m not saying Apple will suffer for it, only that the two worlds are night and day — just the way Droid likes it.
Bear in mind, this spot is just a teaser. Who knows what the full campaign will look like, but we can safely assume it won’t feature grandma and her new kitten.
I haven’t yet gotten to play with a Droid X, but from what I see of it online, it will give iPhone a run for its money. The huge screen looks amazing, though I’m curious to find out what that means for battery life. The fact that it’s available on Verizon puts even more pressure on Apple at a time when they’ve got their hands full with, uh, other issues.
In the meantime, I’m a sucker for a good story — and this spot does its job well. Kudos to whoever created it. Great work. (If anyone knows who the culprits are, I’d be happy to give them credit here.)
Apple’s new batch of iPhone 4 ads come at a most interesting time.
iPhones continue to sell like, well, iPhones — yet that thorny little reception issue keeps getting more complicated. Antenna experts debate, competitors take advantage and now even Consumer Reports lobs a grenade, apparently landing a direct hit on Apple’s sense of sportsmanship.
Let the battles rage, I say. For the moment there are new ads to review, and it’s our holy duty to answer the call.
There are four new ads in total, joining the first ad that’s been running for a while now. Like that first spot, the new ones focus on one thing and one thing only: FaceTime. That’s the killer feature, and Apple (thanks to agency TBWA\Chiat\Day) communicates with the simplicity and clarity it’s known for.
There’s a ton of humanity in each of the new spots. In fact, if you don’t take them in moderation, you may suffer an overdose of humanity.
It’s an old joke in marketing that babies and puppies are the only sure-fire hits with customers. Of the four new iPhone spots, one is about a newborn and another is about a baby-to-come. Hmm.
Here’s a quick review of each of the spots:
Meet Her. A new dad uses his iPhone to give his own father a first look at his baby girl. Touching script. Grandpa plays the part perfectly. Heavy on the sap factor, but looks great. Nice touch that the beautiful baby is confined to the mini-screen while we concentrate on the bigger image of gramps.
Haircut. This is a real charmer. It doesn’t set out so obviously to tug at your heartstrings, it’s just an everyday story — which actually makes it more powerful. You don’t feel like you’ve been “played” after you see it. You totally get how iPhone could change the way you communicate.
Smile. This spot succeeds in the same way Haircut does. Not at all heavy-handed, it’s just a moment in life made more touching by iPhone. The girl with the braces is sweet and plays the part perfectly, melting under dad’s gentle pressure in the span of 30 seconds.
Big News. Unfortunately, no matter how cool FaceTime is, you can’t help but think it’s sad that dad-to-be is getting the most important news of his life via iPhone. If the happy couple has really “been working on ‘that thing’ for a while now,” I can think of a few better ways to share this moment.
One technical quibble with these spots is the hand. In Meet Her, it feels totally natural. It moves. It’s real. In the other three spots, it’s like a piece of acrylic — unnaturally perfect and motionless, save a little shifting that appears to be added after the fact. I wonder why all the spots couldn’t have been produced with the reality of Meet Her.
I imagine these ads will work well for Apple, especially in the touchy situation they’ve created with the antenna. Connecting emotionally with customers is the best insulation against damage, and that’s been Apple’s strength for eons.
I will only note that with Apple’s transition from perennial underdog to market leader, its consumer image seems to be evolving from human & cool to human & sappy. Doubtful that Apple will slide headlong into the Hallmark Zone — but when two out of four spots are about babies and fatherhood, the puppies can’t be far behind.
Forget the BP oil spill. Never mind the European financial crisis. Apple has put up a few web pages.
You’d think by now it would cease to be surprising when grown adults overreact to this stuff. But I’m honestly amazed how many sites reported last week that Apple has started a new Mac campaign with the theme Why you’ll love a Mac — replacing its much-loved (and now much-expired) Get a Mac campaign.
Good lord. Relax.
Why you’ll love a Mac is not a campaign. It’s a series of web pages very much like those Apple has used for years to present the benefits of both Mac and Mac OS X.
Looks to me like the contracts for Justin Long and John Hodgman have simply lapsed and Apple has removed the spots from their site accordingly. Why you’ll love a Mac now tells the feature overview story.
Who knows what the new campaign will be, or if Apple even believes a Mac campaign is required at the moment. But I’ll go way out on a limb and predict that whenever a new campaign begins, it will not be a list of benefits with the theme line Why you’ll love a Mac.
Go about your business, citizens. Remain calm. Help is on its way.
AT&T, the one sour note in iPhone’s symphony, has been running a new brand campaign called Rethink Possible for about month now (via agency BBDO). Of course, this is much bigger than AT&T Mobile. This is about AT&T revamping their overall image across the spectrum of things they do: mobile, phone, Internet and TV.
When I look at marketing from companies like AT&T, I have two questions. Is it creative? And will it do them any good?
My cheery weekend spirit requires me to start with the positive: Damn, I love this campaign launch commercial. We see dozens of new animation techniques every year, but this one is so beautifully simple and mesmerizing, I never get tired of it — which is fortunate, because I seem to see it everywhere.
I’ve honestly never liked the Pure Imagination song from Willie Wonka, as I’ve seen it used before and it’s always felt corny and lame. Here it feels like genius. Layering such an innocent song over this combination of live action and animation works really well. And then the one line of copy at the end of the spot is near perfect. (I can only say “near” because I was trained long ago that perfection, like the speed of light, is unattainable.)
Go to the AT&T Rethink Possiblewebsite and you’re greeted by animated text, again well written. There you can view the other commercials in this campaign, which, especially when viewed in sequence, start feeling like typical, slick, big-agency BBDO-style commercials. Unlike the launch spot, the humanity in these spots is more expected and sappier.
Happily, with this campaign AT&T seems to be putting the bad memory of Luke Wilson and all that juvenile back-and-forth with Verizon out to pasture. Kudos for that.
It’s when you start thinking about the reality of AT&T’s situation that things get significantly less happy. What about this strategy? How believable is it to cast AT&T as the company that can really “rethink possible”?
AT&T certainly has the right to revamp its image. You can’t expect them to tie themselves to a post and accept 40 lashes. (Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask.) But I don’t imagine a lot of viewers will be leaping from their chairs eager to follow AT&T down the golden path. The company is held responsible for a a great many telco evils, iPhone’s network performance being only one.
If AT&T sees itself as the innovation leader, most will see that for what it is: pure imagination. Having read their entire site, I don’t see a single thing I’m not already getting from Verizon.
Basically, AT&T is a monolith doing what monoliths do. They’re trying to convince us they’re innovative by telling us they’re innovative — when they should instead be demonstrating it with fresh ideas and products.
This campaign changes nothing. Rethink possible is a great employee motivation campaign and T-shirt. To the outside world, it’s just a lot of fluff. But I have to admit — in the launch commercial, it’s truly first-class fluff.
Under no circumstances take this as a criticism. This is a big, empathetic hug from a kindred spirit who knows the pain. Writing ain’t easy.
Imagine you’re the hungry writer at Apple who gets the job of introducing the new line of MacBook Pros. This is your moment. No more writing Snow Leopoard pages buried six links deep. You’re the guy who is going to introduce the laptops every pro has been lusting for. You couldn’t even sleep last night, being all giddy about today’s briefing. And now the meeting’s about to begin…
The Keynote presentation is Apple-flawless. The product manager takes you through all of MacBook Pro’s new features, one by one. The presentation is dramatically building to the “key message” — the magic thought that is to pervade all marketing materials for the updated product line. It’s not just any thought. It’s been blessed by Steve himself. It will be your guiding light as you write your little heart out.
You lean forward in your chair as the last feature slide begins an impressive origami transition, and finally the key message reveals itself: It’s the fastest MacBook Pro ever.
Everyone else in the room seems to be eagerly taking notes. But you’re the one who has to write the damn web pages. So you get up your nerve to look this gift horse in the mouth and ask,”Excuse me, but is that it? It’s faster?”
“Exactly,” says the product manager.
You suddenly feel some other person inside your own body, someone who’s a lot feistier than you, and that person grabs your microphone.
“Wait a second,” you hear yourself say, “isn’t that the same message we used when we introduced the previous new MacBook family? And the one before that? And the last five generations of iMac? And every generation of Mac Pro???”
“Sure is,” says the product manager, with a forced smile, “but you’re the writer — have some fun with it.”
The fact is, there’s nothing tougher than having to go to the well, time after time after time, to come up with a new way to say the same old thing. And in the technology world, just about every product refresh is the same old thing. More, better, faster. This time around, we get The fastest, most powerful MacBook Pro ever. Times three. Uh huh. Like there’s any surprise that the new MacBook Pros are faster than the old MacBook Pros. Or some precarious thrill to the fact that three MacBook Pros are being replaced by the same three MacBook Pros.
They should make one of those Budweiser radio commercials about a new “American Hero” — the writer who must somehow turn a completely unsurprising product positioning into a headline that will stop you in your tracks. It takes guts, stamina, and the ability to trash your own work repeatedly until you come up with something you might actually be proud of.
I’ve thought long and hard about getting a new MacBook Pro this year, but I think I’m going to pass. I’m crossing my fingers that next year’s models will be even faster.
There’s a sad story circulating about Apple’s Mac vs. PC campaign. In an interview, Justin I’m-a-Mac Long says he “thinks they might be done.”
Who knows how true that is. But just in case, let’s pause for a moment of appreciation. Apple has had some amazing single advertising moments, but as a complete campaign, this is the granddaddy of them all. It started in 2006 and Apple/Chiat has been churning them out ever since. The list of Mac vs. PC spots on Wikipedia was so long, I didn’t want to hurt myself counting.
Obviously it wasn’t about quantity. This campaign succeeded on multiple levels. In the past, Apple had often searched for the right way to slam Windows (anyone remember “the hard way vs. the easy way”?), but traction was tough to come by.
Mac and PC had exactly the right personalities. Although the deeply anti-Mac crowd sees Apple arrogance in every message, the characters were charmingly human. This campaign has allowed Apple to pummel their competition brutally, but do it with the sweetest smile.
It has also been supremely effective. It made the differences between Mac and PC part of our public conversation. That was the modest goal at the start, and it succeeded beyond Apple’s dreams.
Few campaigns can last four years without going terribly wrong, becoming completely irrelevant or just losing the public’s interest. Mac vs. PC remained fresh. When a new commercial comes out, it still gets talked about.
Readers of this blog know that I have criticized the iPhone campaign for its three-year run. Yet I’m sitting here lavishing love on a campaign that’s run even longer. What’s with that? Easy to explain. First, I’m a bad person. Second, this has to do with a campaign’s depth, not its longevity.
Mac vs. PC has continuously evolved in interesting ways — every commercial makes a different point. There’s tension. Costumes change, we see new props, guest characters, etc. Even with your TV muted, you can tell you’re seeing a new spot. The campaign also thrives in the digital world. The Mac vs. PC web banners are far more entertaining than the pages they live on, always finding ways to surprise us.
Contrast that with the iPhone commercials, which basically use the same template every time out. They’re pleasant, informative, very Apple — and they deserve to die.
That’s because “good enough” has never, ever been good enough for Apple. The company has no problem killing off a successful product to replace it with something better. That’s been its attitude about advertising as well.
The iPhone campaign totally works. Sales are through the roof. But there is a huge difference between “it works” and “holy cow.” Apple has never believed in coasting with its ads, it has always evolved in unexpected ways. It’s part of their DNA.
iPhone ads just don’t distinguish themselves anymore. It’s become difficult to tell one from the next. Considering the huge role iPhone has in Apple’s future plans, and the narrowing gap between iPhone and its competitors, it’s actually surprising that iPhone advertising remains so formulaic.
So a tip of the hat to Mac vs. PC and its creators at Chiat/Day. If the campaign really is soon to end, I hope they have one hell of a send-off party. Maybe this will give them added incentive to start casting for the “I’m an iPhone, I’m a Droid” campaign.
I’m suffering a bit of blogger’s remorse about my comments yesterday re: the iPad marketing campaign.
I was initially reacting to a single ad I had seen (New York Times), and I probably shouldn’t have been so quick to react. One song in isolation is hardly enough evidence to judge an entire album.
Now that I’ve seen the ads going up around town, and I’ve revisited the TV commercial, I think that visions of iPad will indeed be dancing in more people’s heads. That, combined with the intense buzz that’s already out there, will drive more and more people to the Apple Store to see iPad for themselves. What Apple is doing is what it often does: they are visually making the product the absolute star of the ad, to make it as clear as possible how it works and what it will look like in your life.
The TV ad, although way too fast for many, adds an interesting effect when taken in context of all the print ads and posters. You can examine an individual screen in print, get a sense of the quantity of screens in the TV.
A wise man in advertising once taught me that if you’re going to reject someone’s work, it must be because it’s terrible — not because it isn’t what you would have done.
So I won’t quibble about certain elements of this campaign. I will only continue to wish there were more Apple cleverness in these ads. If ever there were a campaign that should make you smile, this is it — because that’s exactly what iPad makes you do.
I support legislation requiring every blogger to make a happy post at least once per week. What’s with all my recent negativity?
Today, I’d like to shine the light of love on FITC Design & Technology Events, a Canadian organization that stages industry technical and creative events around the world. To promote their events, they have produced this video: The last advertising agency on earth.
It’s one of those videos I like to watch a few times, because the detail and production value is so damn good. The narrator, the music, the myriad ways they portray the dead agency. Spooky and funny all at the same time. I’m always tickled by a creative team in bunny suits (you’ll need to freeze frame on that one). The vast, empty offices and corridors were supposed to signify a long-gone agency, but to be honest they just sort of reminded me of the last place I worked.
Now don’t take this as a slam, because that’s so clearly not the vibe today. I love the production, but the story — well, that’s only about a decade old now. The agencies that haven’t yet gotten the change-or-die message are surely long gone at this point. The video mentions how this fictional agency arrogantly clung to the idea of the TV commercial and repurposed print headlines as rich-media web banners. By presenting such ancient revelations as news, it feels like whoever wrote the script must surely work at one of those dinosaur agencies.
But I didn’t say that. Really. That would be negative.
I do love the video and think it’s worth watching, simply for the fun of it. It’s one of those productions that people would do for free (which they just might have). You can tell by the finished product that these guys had a heck of a good time.
Who the heck do I think I am? I’m a creative director who’s had more than a few adventures in technology marketing, including branding, product naming and strategy. I have a long history with Apple and NeXT — where I took a blood oath to uphold the principles of simplicity.
Forget the BP oil spill. Never mind the European financial crisis. Apple has put up a few web pages.
There’s a sad story circulating about Apple’s Mac vs. PC campaign. In an 
I’m suffering a bit of blogger’s remorse about my comments yesterday re: the iPad marketing campaign.